Evaluation of the usability of selected innovation concepts for managing innovation activities

Abstract

A significant number of enterprise owners and managers realize an importance of innovations for the future existence of their business and its development. It appears that in theory and business practice a number of innovation concepts can be found, however for managers and business owners it is difficult to be knowledgeable in innovation concepts in order to use them in practice. Innovation concepts represent solutions outline, which react to the business ability to innovate. Each innovation concept is different in the area of focusing on innovation problem and way of detailization. Chosen innovation concepts can be applied when solving following problems: Identifying the innovation potential, organizational readiness for innovation and achieved levels of innovation climate, or the actual implementation of the innovation process and the evaluation of innovation. It is worth noting that concrete innovation concepts are not at the same level of usability in practice, some of them need to be better specified for application in business. A set of innovation concepts was created and evaluated the usability of individual concepts in the enterprise. The evaluation was carried out by qualitative analysis using selected criteria, which were determined by an expert group with the assistance of the researcher. Variants of usability of innovation concepts were defined subsequently. At the same time, decision-making model based on the Analytic Hierarchical Process was designed and applied in order to classify innovation concepts. Decision-making model can be used by managers for the purpose of innovations management while choosing the concept of innovation.